Rory McIlroy Says PGA Tour Should Take Inspiration from NBA, Build Around Stars

The NBA has marketed around its star players for generations, and Rory McIlroy told reporters he would like the PGA Tour to follow suit.

"If you look at the NBA's trajectory over the last 20 years, they've built that league around their best players and their stars, not around the 12th guy on the team," he said. "But because they've built that league up around the stars, the 12th guy on the team does way better than he used to. So that's sort of the way I've been trying to tell it."

McIlroy's comments came as the PGA Tour continues to deal with the threat that is LIV Golf, which is bankrolled by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and has received criticism as part of a sportswashing effort to distract from the country's human rights record.

While the back-and-forth between the two enterprises continues with legal battles and quips, the PGA Tour lost a number of headline names to the competitor, including Phil Mickelson, Cameron Smith, Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau.

Mark Schlabach of ESPN noted part of the PGA Tour's response to LIV was to designate nine tournaments for increased purses with four additional events labeled as designated for this season.

The idea is to further persuade the sport's best players to compete in tournaments outside of the four majors with these purses, although there is at least some concern that limiting fields in such events to the top 70 or 80 competitors could squeeze out some of the usual competitors.

"I've had tons of conversations with guys that are worried about what events they're going to play next year and all that," McIlroy said while stressing it won't be a system of a "closed shop for the same guys every week" even with the designated tournaments.

"The one thing I said, 'Look, no one's trying to screw the bottom half of the tour here.' If anything, we're trying to lift it up."

Scottie Scheffler echoed those sentiments.

"If we do go to those smaller fields, it's not going to be an inaccessible event," he said. "Just because you go down from 120 guys—let's say you go to 70—there's still going to be avenues for people to get into those tournaments, like the eligibility to get into those events is still going to reward good golf."

Enticing the best players in the field to compete on a weekly basis and marketing the sport around the stars, as McIlroy suggested the PGA Tour do while following the NBA as a model, all while avoiding a situation where the bottom half of the field is left out is a difficult balancing act.

But the PGA Tour is attempting to navigate a new-look golf world with a primary competitor as a new season begins to unfold.